Scraps #4 · 12:50am Apr 8th, 2014
DON’T FORGET THE MALTED MILK IMPOUNDMENTS
“Mommy, are you sure you know how to make a cake?” asked Velvet. The little lilac filly frowned at the thing that had just come out of the oven.
“Of course, sweetie,” lied Twilight, flashing her daughter a too-big smile.
“Is it supposed to be all black like that?”
“Um . . . not exactly,” Twilight admitted. She turned back to the cookbook propped open on the counter. “I just don’t know what went wrong,” she muttered, horn glowing as she flicked through the pages. “I followed the recipe exactly this time.” She glanced at the clock and grimaced: Rainbow Dash would be home in twenty minutes. There was no way they’d have time for another attempt. What to do, what to do . . .
Velvet circled the abomination sitting on the tray, peering critically at it. “It’s better on this side,” she announced after a moment.
Twilight stepped over and studied the other side of what was supposed to be a cake. Better was a rather generous term, she decided, but Velvet did have a point. “Hmm. Maybe we can salvage this after all. If I trim a bit here . . . ”
Gritting her teeth, Twilight picked up a knife with her magic and went to work. A minute’s careful sawing and scraping left her with a heap of burned debris, along with a small, lumpy thing that, if not really a proper cake, did at least look less like a piece of charcoal. It wasn’t pretty, but it would have to do.
“All right,” she said, grinning at Velvet. “What next?”
“Icing!” cried the filly, her little wings fluttering.
“Correct. The problem is, I’m not sure if I can make it all on my own.”
Velvet giggled. “I can help, mommy! I can help!”
“Thank you, Velvet,” said Twilight, smiling. She picked up Velvet, hugged her, then carefully put her on a stool so the filly could reach the bowls and ingredients piled on the counter. “Okay, then. Let’s get mixing!”
* * *
“Mama, look!” shouted Velvet, rocketing into the main room. “Me and mommy made a cake!” She jabbed a tiny hoof at the table where the cake reposed.
“Mommy and I,” Twilight corrected automatically. “And yes, we did.” She smiled as Velvet clamped herself around one of Rainbow’s forelegs.
“Awesome!” said the older pegasus, leaning down to nuzzle her daughter. “What kind?”
Velvet considered. “Uh . . . chocolate. I think.”
“You think? Well, I guess I’m gonna have to try a slice and find out.”
Twilight tutted. “Rainbow, you can’t have cake before dinner.”
“Aw, c’mon, Twi,” wheedled Rainbow. “If you guys made a cake, I gotta try some.”
Twilight opened her mouth to protest, but then she saw Velvet staring up at her with those wide, pleading, impossible-to-resist eyes. She sighed, defeated. “Fine, fine.”
Taking up the knife again, she managed to chop off a piece of the cake—which at this point consisted of more icing than cake; Velvet was nothing if not enthusiastic—dropped it onto a plate, and floated it over to her wife.
Rainbow grinned and took a big bite. Twilight watched in morbid fascination as the pegasus’s face suddenly contorted in horror before forcing itself back into a sickly smile.
“Do you like it, Mama?” asked Velvet, all but hopping up and down.
Rainbow glanced at Twilight, then back at Velvet, then somehow swallowed the cake. “Y-yeah,” she wheezed. “You did a great job, Vee. Heh heh.”
The filly beamed. “I knew you’d like it! But actually . . . ” She leaned in, and her voice dropped to a loud whisper. “Mommy cooked the cake. I did the icing!”
“Oh, I see,” Rainbow whispered back. She looked at Twilight and smirked.
Twilight felt her face redden. “There were some technical difficulties,” she muttered.
Rainbow’s smirk suddenly softened into a warm smile. The pegasus walked over and wrapped a wing around her, nuzzling her neck. “Hey,” she murmured. “It’s not that bad.”
Twilight as the stay at home mom, huh? I must say, it's not the sort of family dynamic I'd expect from these two. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how a TwiDash+foal dynamic would work at all, which probably makes it a story worth exploring.
*ahem* You know, if you wanted to continue this...
1990829
For a TwiDash+foal scenario, I've always kinda figured that Twilight would be more likely to carry their
magical lesbian love babyartificially inseminated child and stay home with him/her. Even if Twilight is a princess—she wasn't when I wrote this scene—her life is less physically demanding than Rainbow's.Rainbow wants to be (or maybe already is) a Wonderbolt, and being pregnant would obviously put a damper on that.As for continuing this...I dunno. I feel relatively comfortable writing Twilight and Dash, but little kids like Velvet here (i.e., younger than the CMC) are tricky. There would be delicious emotional baggage—Oh noes, Velvet is closer to Twi than Dash because Twi bore her/spends more time with her and now Dash is jealous and angry at herself for feeling that way!—but I'm not sure I'd be able to get it right.
Homely scenes like this are nice. So are same-sex parent family dynamics. But writing the kids, in any situation, is weird. It's not that most adults forget how to be kids; a lot of them pull off it pretty well everyday, in fact. Just, the gap in perspective between someone who can express but doesn't have a very deep grasp over what little experience they have, and someone who's trying to meta that with their own conceptions of childhood while pinning down a voice... is weird. Semi-annoyingly so. I dunno. In a lot of fics I see, if authors use kids, they get them out of the picture quickly, or they end up writing them too smart. I mean, kids can be smart, or forced into older roles, but when they're turned into vehicles for one-liners, quips, and other assorted snappiness, it kind of breaks character. (Unless they're bookworms, and they've been reading nothing but I Can Witty Banter And So Can You. Which is probably a waste of a childhood.) Typically, they'll tend to carry themselves in simpler ways, and for simpler reasons. That's kinda what being a kid's about.
Anyway. You pulled it off decently.
So I guess this is what'd you call slice of lif- I'll stop. (no i wont)
2017647
), and I very much doubt I'd be able to do better.
That's pretty much right on the money. Little kids are just hard to write believably. They see things differently than older characters, and, more to the point, express themselves differently. I can't recall any pony fics that manage to pull that off (looking at you, Hocus Pocus
In my opinion, you did do better than the majority of what I usually see. But who knows? You may not be able to do better after all, though that shouldn't stop you from trying. You can probably work through a lot of the snags in presenting any character by reason alone. I mean, regardless of age, an average sentient being has a range of emotions, potential for relationships and intelligence, to some extent. Pretty much any motive or direction you could want for your characters can come out of those three, and then it just takes tailoring that to any specializations or restrictions contributed by the story or the character itself. If it's just your concept of "What would a kid do?" that's not as clear as you want it to be, a second opinion never hurts, so long as you don't let it unreasonably overtake your own. Or you can just write the hell out of it; then it's a matter of hitting your head against the proverbial wall until one of them breaks.
Anyway, whether or not it's good or bad writing, room for improvement's always there, right?
Also, that first line makes me wonder. Did YOU forget the malted milk impoundments?